Fresh off studiously ignoring Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence for the duration of her fishy fast, Thomas Mulcair added to his careful-centrist credentials yet again this week, when news broke of Canadian Special Forces on the ground in Mali. Given Canada’s recent propensity for finding itself embroiled in foreign conflicts — e.g., Mali’s neighbour to the northeast, Libya — with little in the way of consultation, this might legitimately be seen as perplexing. There must be many in the New Democrat caucus, even non-pacifists, who see it as such. And yet Mr. Mulcair prescribed calm. “We’re simply talking about protecting people in the embassy,” he told CBC. The government is consulting with opposition leaders on the matter, he insisted. Relax.

However, there is at least some activist blood left in Mr. Mulcair’s veins, as John Ivison noted in Tuesday’s National Post. Mr. Mulcair supports Romeo Saganash’s private member’s bill that would give full effect to the provisions of the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights — endorsed by Canada in 2010 with the correct proviso that it was merely an “aspirational” document. Taken seriously, the document could open a can of worms with regards to everything from land claims to Parliament’s legislative powers. It is clearly not something a Prime Minister Mulcair would want to deal with, but as a political sop to the party’s left — at least some of whom were clearly upset at his snubbing of Chief Spence — it might be well-played.

More troubling, given Mr. Mulcair’s large Quebec-nationalist caucus, is the NDP proposal to replace the Clarity Act, which stipulates preconditions — notably a “clear majority” vote on a clearly worded referendum question — for secession negotiations between Quebec and Ottawa, with something more New Democratic.

The NDP voted for the Clarity Act in 2000, but muddied the water five years later with their Sherbrooke Declaration, which stipulates a 50%-plus-one condition for negotiations. While wooing soft Quebec nationalists, both Jack Layton and Mr. Mulcair waffled tirelessly over the ensuing years as to how or if this constituted rejection of the Clarity Act (which it logically does, if the words “clear majority” have any meaning).

The Bloc Québécois, former home of several hundred thousand NDP votes, now is trying to force Mr. Mulcair’s hand by proposing outright repeal of the Clarity Act, in a bill that received second reading on Monday. The New Democrats have countered with a bill proposing to enshrine the 50%-plus-one threshold and demanding (as the Clarity Act does) a simple question — indeed it goes further and proposes clear questions such as “Should Quebec become a sovereign country?” or “Should Quebec separate from Canada and become a sovereign country?”

Mr. Mulcair’s 50%-plus-one fiddling represents a stain on this nominally “federalist” party. The existing law that Mr. Mulcair seeks to do away with, we hasten to note, is itself based on a Supreme Court decision indicating that a “clear majority vote in Quebec on a clear question in favour of secession would confer democratic legitimacy on the secession initiative which all of the other participants in Confederation would have to recognize.” The NDP talks up a good game about respecting the Supreme Court when it comes to just about every other area of jurisprudence — so why not here?

On the other hand, it is important not to pin this whole problem on Mr. Mulcair, for he is not the only self-described federalist clinging to the 50%-plus-one line of argument. (It was always the position, for example, of Jean Charest.) And given the pressure Mr. Mulcair feels from the BQ, he no doubt believes that he cannot go back to the pre-Sherbrooke Declaration days. He likely won’t change his mind, no matter how many newspaper editorial writers hector him over the matter.

Thankfully, prominent Liberals take another view. In response to Mr. Mulcair’s gambit, Justin Trudeau told reporters that the NDP leader’s “willingness to equivocate, his willingness to be open to a 50%-plus-one vote on sovereignty, takes us back in a direction that we don’t want to go, and it’s a very careful political calculation by him to appease his strong nationalist base in Quebec.”

All true. And Mr. Trudeau should be applauded for saying it. Under such a posture, the Liberals might lose a few potential votes from Quebec in the next election. But they likely would gain many times that number in the rest of the country.

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